On the other side, President Obama's supporters say that he has brought the country back from the brink of a depression when we were losing 700,000 jobs a month, saved the U.S. auto industry and brought health care to 30 million uninsured Americans. And he killed Osama bin Laden.
President Obama's Chicago Home
Barack and Michelle Obama were living in a Chicago condo when they bought this Georgian Revival home in June, 2005 for $1.65 million. They made three offers on the home before their final offer - $300,000 under the asking price - was accepted. It is a designated historical home in Chicago's Hyde Park-Kenwood neighborhood. Obama's neighbors include more big homes, apartment buildings and the KAM Isiah Israel Synagogue (where the Secret Service agents guarding the President's home go to the bathroom). The University of Chicago (where Obama was a law professor) and Lake Michigan are nearby.
The area has a long history as a center for culture and religion. Hyde Park was the site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. A number of churches and museums are located here including the Museum of Science and Industry, Smart Museum of Art, Catholic Theological Union and Chicago Theological Seminary. Paul Douglas, William Rand, Marshall Field and Hugh Heffner were former area residents. Barack was the newly elected Illinois U.S. Senator at the time of the 2005 home purchase.
The Obama home was built in 1910 at three stories and over 6000 square feet (often referred to as a mansion) on a 10,500 square foot lot with 6 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms and a 4-car garage. Real estate agents would describe the home as handsome, classic and grand with red bricks and white pillars. Its 2005 home-for-sale description listed four fireplaces, Honduran mahogany glass-door bookcases, a granite kitchen floor and a 1,000-bottle wine cellar. A former resident's relative says there was also a third floor ballroom that may have been once used as a dance studio.
The original owner was A. R. Clarke, a Chicago builder and architect who lived here until 1919. The home then passed through several prominent Jewish families, but the Foreman family, who lived here during the Depression, lost it to foreclosure when the bank they owned went bankrupt in the 1930s. It was then used as a Jewish day school and cultural center in the 1940s, and was sold to the Hyde Park Lutheran Church for $35,000 in 1954. The home was later owned by University of Chicago husband and wife doctors when the Obamas purchased the home in 2005.
A similar home next door to the Obama house came up for sale in 2010 and was marketed by the real estate listing agency as The Worlds Ultimate Gated Community because of the high-level of security on the street. The home was advertised throughout the world in an effort to create a bidding war, which never happened. The home eventually sold for $1.4 million.
The Obama family lived here until Barack was inaugurated in January, 2009. Chicago tour guide Phil Clanton recently told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he recalls seeing Mr. Obama mow his front lawn before he became President. Like many Americans, it appears the Obamas have seen their home value deteriorate. The home is estimated to be worth about $1.2 million some $450,000 less than they paid for it in 2005.
Mitt Romney's New Hampshire Home
Although the other Republicans beat him up pretty badly in the GOP presidential primaries, Mitt Romney never stopped smiling. Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry said he was a flip flopper who pioneered Obamacare in Massachusetts, supported gun control before he was against it, and was hiding something by not releasing his tax returns. No worry! Mitt just flashed his big smile.
With about $250 million in the bank and fabulous homes throughout the United States, no wonder Mitt seems so happy. Maybe he wasn't even paying attention to his bashers? Maybe he was thinking about his California beach home that he bought in 2008 for $12 million and now plans to tear down and replace with a brand new 11,000 square foot estate with a cool $50,000 car elevator? Or his Utah ski home that he sold a couple years ago for $5 million, or his conservative Boston town home, or maybe his $10 million lake house in New Hampshire?
It was a joke earlier this year when Jay Leno compared Mitt Romney's New Hampshire lake home to the humongous, gold-plated Golden Temple of Amritsar Shrine in India. The Romney summer compound is not gold plated and not really a shrine, but it does seem almost as perfect as Mitt's hair.
The Romneys bought this 5,400-square-foot contemporary estate on 11 acres in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire in 1997 for $3 million. The home is on a secluded, private street with 800 feet of shoreline on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire's largest lake. It is three levels, 6 bedrooms with a 2,600 square-foot guest house, a 2,700 square-foot boat house, a beach volleyball court, beautiful lake views, and lots of trees - that are exactly the right height.
Wolfeboro traces its roots back to 1759 when New Hampshire's colonial governor gave the land to four of his friends - the colonial version of trickle-down economics - in honor of English General James Wolfe. The governor was later forced out of office for giving away too much land, including some that belonged to New York, but the town lived on. Today, Wolfeboro seems to be a city of job creators (McCain narrowly beat Obama in the 2008 Wolfeboro vote) with a median income that is 61% higher than the U.S. average. The local chamber of commerce calls it "The Jewel of Lake Winnipesaukee" and "The Oldest Summer Resort in America" when the year-round population of about 6,200 swells to over 20,000. The town is over 99% white.
In addition to the Romney digs, Wolfeboro is the home town for the elite Brewster Academy boarding school (average class size is 12, student-teacher ratio is 6:1) and high school athletic juggernaut (360 students with 14 sports programs including sailing and snowboarding) that has produced several national high school basketball championships and a number of NBA and college hoops stars. Ultimate Frisbee, chamber orchestra and yoga are just a few of the extra activities available at the school. The academy's 20 dormitories have extensive views of both Lake Winnipesaukee and the Belknap Mountains. Other famous Wolfeboro summer visitors have included French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Monaco's Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, Drew Barrymore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mike Krzyzewski and Jimmy Fallon.
No worries about depressed real estate values. Romney is the former Massachusetts governor, 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics chief executive, and Bain Capital founder with an estimated net worth so big that the United States can't even hold it all, so Mitt has stashed a lot of it in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. According to local experts, Mitt's New Hampshire home is now worth about $10 million.
Reprinted from TopTenRealEstateDeals.com
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